Paperback Wonderland

Monday, 19 November 2018

In a royal family of monstrous ogres, continuous inbreeding has been yielding smaller and smaller children. Petit is the smallest yet. So small his mother did not know she was pregnant with him until she birthed him. Instantly reviled for his human size, the court demands to eat him, so such blight can be erased from the royal family.

His mother, however, believes Petit will bring about great things, much as their distant ancestor: the Founder, who mated with humans and thus had bigger and bigger children.

I absolutely LOVED this! Petit reads as a grotesque fairy tale, certainly not for the faint hearted, but amazing just the same. The monstrous court, violent and stupid, feasting on humans and reveling in their reign of terror, the bizarre architecture of the gigantic palace, the story meandering through the present interspersed with short stories about the great ancestors of the royal family... it was all absolutely delicious!

Saturday, 17 November 2018

I'd heard of Sandoval before, but I'd never checked his work until now, and I'll be sure to see what else he has to offer.

In Watersnakes, Milla is a girl on summer vacation who, on one of her wanderings, meets Agnes and falls in love with her. Her fascination with Agnes' teeth and their role in the story, as independent entities, as warriors, is surrealistically fetishistic but fits into the world of dreams and magic where nothing has to be logic as long as it propels the story forward. Agnes turns out to be a ghost who lingers in this world because an ancient octopus king resides inside her. And with Milla's help, perhaps Agnes' octopus king and his warriors can wage war on their enemies.

Watersnakes' plot and artwork really manage to convey a dreamy, somewhat disjointed atmosphere which is what really sells the book.

Monday, 12 November 2018

So... I haven't written a proper review in so long, that I don't even know if I can do it anymore...

In my case, the thing that mostly draws me to retellings is that magical element. The anything can happen vibe mixed with a dash of serendipity. That is not the case with this story, because it removes every magical/serendipity element and gives its readers a cold hard reality.A cold harsh reality of people living difficult lives in dangerous and bleak times, especially for women.That was not what I was expecting, because it ended up being a boring narrative most of the times.Like I mentioned in one of my updates for this book, this could be called 'Agnes: A Tale of Drudgery'.There's a lot of 'not going anywhere, and not specifically interesting' details!Most of those details are right at home in a literary fiction work, but with a retelling? o_O(...)So, what kept me reading, you might ask? Well, unfortunately for me, it is extremely well written. -_- So, even when I was mumbling to myself, 'please, no more hair descriptions...', I was reading it!And I think I finished this in less of a week; which for me lately is almost a miracle! Ha!!So, what can you expect from this?Well imagine if a fairy tale was deconstructed of all of its interesting/magical/loving details and Ella was actually a spoiled brat, you'd pretty much have this. :DOh, and all the 'bad things' that the stepmother is rumored to have done to the Cinder girl ?Yeah, actually they were just misunderstandings. -_- And people needing therapy for all the lying they do!!(...)But, it is really well written!

Thursday, 26 July 2018

This is one of those books that I read ages ago _ okay, it
feels like it was a long, long time ago _ and that got me so mad, that I
thought 'what the hell, I'm not even going to bother to write a review
for it'... unfortunately it seems that I'm still mad about it, so here
it goes!

PremiseGreat premise, but extremely poor execution with the story entering cliché land with over used and abused plot lines...Thing is, when the blurb talks about the three sister's witches?Yeah...
no. The author couldn't even be bothered to develop likeable characters
who actually liked one another; no, she had to follow the harpy route,
in which each sister pretty much hated/ despised or just plain ignored
one another.

Highlight for spoilers...They were not witches, just plain stupid.

Then there's the main character who is as interesting as white bread.The writing started out decent enough, but then definitely takes a swift turn at purple land.The "romance"...Ugh, ugh and ugh. :/ #ConsentWhereAreThou

The
guy appears out of nowhere, and she just takes him home to the island
where she lives _ ALONE _ with her mother. #ThisIsHowPeopleGetsKilled

Of course romance ensues _ not really, but (they just start having sex ) because why not, Love of my life. And the whole thing was strange and icky.

Honestly
at this point I just wanted to know what had happened to her father,
because the rest was so ludicrous that I was getting migraines from
constant eye rolling.The guy had the emotions of a sociopath and she was basically a leech; worst couple ever!

Sunday, 22 April 2018

I've wanted to get my hands on this book since I read Amélie Fléchais' Le Petit Loup Rouge so when I saw it on Netgalley I did not hesitate!

Sadly, it was very disappointing...

I'm not the first reviewer (and I doubt I'll be the last) to mention how the manga influences made the reading of this book feel extremely uneven.

If there is one thing Fléchais excels at it's artwork, but how can you go from this:

To this:

That is not to say that the artwork is bad - the fully coloured pages are stunning, to say the least:

But then it's incredibly jarring to go, in the same scene, from this:

To this:

And the plot was completely nonsensical. I was really hoping to see some of the Over the Garden Wall influences advertised in the summary, and while, visually, they were somewhat there, the plot was completely disconnected and confusing and might as well not have been there.

The boys get lost and stumble upon events about to lead into a war in the forest... and then they leave.

Monday, 5 March 2018

'Tricks For Free' by Seanan Mcguire (Incryptid #7), pub. by Daw Books, March 6th - genre: urban fantasy
I am normally a fan for everything that Seanan Mcguire writes...
tapeworms and zombies excluded, although I still haven't started with
the Mira Grant's series. This one? I am way behind it!

'Children of Blood and Bone' by Tomi Adeyemi, pub. by HHB for Young Readers, March 6th

'The Mermaid's Daughter' by Ann Claycomb, pub. by William Morrow, March 7th The Merry Spinsters by Mallory Ortberg; pub by Holt McDougal, 13th March
Genre: Fantasy/Retellings/ Horror
A while back I read Ortberg's book 'Texts From Jane Eyre' and I pretty much loved it; so of course I'm curious about this book. Also, Isn't 'The Merry Spinster' a great title?